[TheNaylors]

We, are by no means "twitchers"...but I do love to sit having breakfast whilst watching the birds. This has actually been quite difficult to achieve for us with our location and what was a fairly barren back yard. In the last two years we have planted a variety of climbing plants up our fences, potted plants and provided shelter for the smaller birds. Now we regularly have dunnocks, robins, collared doves, jackdaws, blackbirds (the male of which has recently lost his tail feathers and is aptly named "stumpy"), starlings, pesky pigeons, and on 2 (yes 2) occasions in the last 2 years we have been been visited by a blue tit and a great tit! A chaffinch also made an appearence, albeit just the once...he just watched the others then flew off!

Just got me wondering, what birds I am likely to be sat watching whilst enjoying my morning coffee (or my glass of wine in the evening :D) in NZ?

Looking forward to your input,
Cheers

[Georgebulldog]

Now I don't know birds that well but we have had fantails, not many, blackbirds, sparrows & my favourite Tui's, they love the silver dollor tree & I can open the window & listen to them singing
We don't have a big garden but the trees I thought were olive are now Tawa I believe & birds love them & a fence always help, they sit on it to get shelter under the trees in the rain, just goes to show you don't need a huge garden to attract birds :nice1

[Sam B]

When we lived in Cambridge town, we were mainly visited by introduced British birds - blackbirds, song thrushes, sparrows, plus myna birds, and some native birds - mainly fantails and silver eyes, and when the kowhai (native tree with yellow flowers) was in bloom, it was covered in tuis.

Now we live out in the country, we see far more native birds, including pukeko, masked lapwings, kereru (native woodpigeon), sacred kingfishers (loads of these), tuis galore, fantails, silvereyes, moreporks (owls), Australasian harriers, plus also exotics such as Eastern rosellas (loads), wild turkeys, myna birds, and all the British ones including yellow hammers and gold finches.

We brought all our bird seed feeders with us and put them up in our town garden. It took us ages to find anywhere that sold birdseed. And we had them up for a year and in that time NOT ONE bird landed on them - not even the British seed eating birds. In the end we concluded that (a) there is too much food naturally available here and (b) they had never seen a feeder and didn't know how to use it.

Now we have just had a massive new bird feeding station made for outside our kitchen window. It has spikes to put fruit on for the parrots and also a nectar feeder that we bought on Tiritiri Matangi so we can attract the tuis. Can't wait to put it up!

[Carey]

Don't seem to be nearly as many birds 'just around' as in Uk but we had much more sheltered garden in UK with hedges and trees than we have here. Bird song is very different, the Tui's and magpies being absolutely wonderful.

[luckystar]

I hadn't considered what the bird life would be in NZ, but I have to say I am pleased that the humble sparrow, blackbird and song thrush are present as well as lots of exciting new bird species for us to discover. We have a number of bird feeders, and at last count 7 different nests up in the roof (4 lots of starlings and 3 lots of sparrows - who studiously ignore the 'sparrow terrace' nest box we put up).

Anyway, great topic and I'm happy.:)
And I'm not a twitcher either - garden birds and that's it.:D

[Kanga]

When we lived in Havelock North we heard a fair bit of birdsong but as Sam B says it was mostly non native. When we lived rurally we saw more native bird life but although we lived opposite native bush on two sides there wasn't actually much. Quite a few Kereru (wood pidgeon) and the gorgeous song of the bell bird but most our UK visitors commented on the absence of birdsong :(

Here in Australia our small garden is constantly full or parakeets, lorakeets, kookaburas and all sorts of exotic (and damn noisy) beautiful birds. Nightfall is deafening! It's right up there on the top things I'd miss dreadfully when leaving.

[MaryMc]

We have (in Whangaparaoa, north Aucks) a large section covered in trees and we get: fantails, tui's, swallows, sparrows, moreporks, thrush, waxeyes, blackbirds, rosellas, kereru (wood pigeon), ducks, kingfishers, hawks and more. It's beautiful to see! (and hear)

We see far more birds in the garden here than we ever did in the UK.

MaryMc

[CJ22]

We regularly get cockatoos, wild budgies and doves. On the more mundane side, there's a duck hangout just down the road, and ducks regularly wander through. Lots of seagulls of course (noisy beggars). Black swans are also common here.

There don't seem to be many raptors, perhaps because there aren't many ground mammals, but there are some. Shame the giant eagles are extinct!

[IanW99]

Some of the houses in Wellington will get to see (or hear) the blue penguins that live under houses in the evening.

Not sure that this is a good thing though as they are (aparently) very noisy.

Ian

[TheNaylors]

Some of the houses in Wellington will get to see (or hear) the blue penguins that live under houses in the evening.

Not sure that this is a good thing though as they are (aparently) very noisy.

Ian

I used to work with humboldt penguins so could probably live with that :D

Gosh...think I am going to have to do some googling tonight to have a look at all these new species, I'm familiar with some but need to brush up on the others. Sparrows, however seem to be everywhere :laugh. We got wed in Mauritius and on the first day there we opened our curtains expecting to find beautiful tropical birds only to find several sparrows sat on our balcony waiting for breakfast!!! :laugh

Sam B - your new bird feeder sounds amazing, you'll have to post some pics of it when you get it up :)

[tea drinker]

Something that caught my interest was what is considered a wildflower in the UK is considered a pest plant in NZ e.g. purple loosestrife
I assume it all comes down to native plants.

[JandM]

I saw an exhibit about such plants and animals in the museum in Auckland in '04. Like gorse, somebody brought it with them because they liked it, but then it naturalized and 'escaped', and it's considered a pest these days because it's choking out native species.